Harlequin.com has released the list of April 2012 titles for its Worldwide Mystery imprint, your partner in crime. Amateur sleuths, traditional cozies, police procedurals and private-eye fiction, written by award-winning authors.
For more information about the book from Harlequin.com, click on the title or cover.
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Mother's Day
Non-Series
No one can believe it when Linda Emery suddenly returns to the quiet seaside town of Bayland. Not the police, who couldn't solve her disappearance all those years earlier. Not the townspeople, who were secretly glad to see her gone. And certainly not Karen Newhall, who adopted Linda's baby girl thirteen years ago. Already reeling from the return of her adopted daughter's biological mother, Karen fears nothing could make her family's anguish worse …
Until Linda turns up brutally murdered and Karen's husband, Greg, is the prime suspect—and on the run! With the witnesses who could clear Greg being disposed of one by one, and with nobody else to trust, Karen sets out on her own to save her family. She knows that the key to everything lies in the shocking long-buried secrets that brought Linda back to town. But someone stalking the shadows has far too much to lose—and is closing in to silence Karen forever …
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Deadly Threads
A Josie Prescott Mystery (6th in series)
Antiques dealer Josie Prescott's New Hampshire business is booming—and expanding to include clothes. So to celebrate she's invited a vintage fashion expert to speak at her store. Only, the woman turns up dead right before she's scheduled to speak … with her own silk scarf tied around her neck!
Josie knows the woman had been upset about something, and she'd suspected it involved her cheating celebrity-chef husband. But would he have killed his wife? And who is the mystery woman at the heart of this love triangle? Police chief Ellis Hunter has a few theories, but Josie knows that accessories don't lie. Whoever owned the unusual pearl button found at the crime scene has to be the killer. Can Josie unravel the deadly threads before she becomes another fashion victim?
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The Lion Tamer
A Grace Marsden Mystery (2nd in series)
When fifty-year-old skeletal remains of a man and a lion are discovered in an old circus wagon pulled from a marsh, Grace Marsden's curiosity is immediately piqued. But her excitement is interrupted by a chilling voice from the grave—a threatening letter penned by a dead woman, vowing revenge. All clues point to Grace's husband Harry's treacherous past, and a vendetta sealed in blood.
But Grace has no cause to link the circus mystery and her own, until the body of a stalker is found bludgeoned behind her home. She suspects that somehow the two mysteries have become entangled. As danger closes in, Grace pieces together a ruthless story of greed, diamond smuggling and murder under the big top. But can she perform her own death-defying act?
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Murder Fortissimo
Non-Series
When a terrible, awful woman dies by suspicious means, is there any reason not to let sleeping killers lie? Christiane Marchant met her bloody end when a large, heavy euphonium plunged off a balcony and onto her head. Everyone at the Firstone Grange residential home agreed it was a terrible accident. But nobody was going to miss the hateful Mrs. Marchant. Not her beleaguered daughter, not the exasperated staff, nor fellow guests at the home—and especially not those she was blackmailing.
But retired headmistress Harriet Quigley, a new resident at the luxury lodgings, believes in getting to the truth, no matter how terrible. As she begins to ask questions, her sympathetic nature elicits more than a few confessions from the others—all involving shameful secrets and long-buried dark deeds that Christiane had threatened to expose. But who among them was forced to resort to murder?
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Cappuccino at the Crypt
Non-Series
A trip to Sicily with a group of teenage girls from St. Hilda's school involves more than chaperoning duties for headmaster Father Felix. He's come to Palermo to right a wrong done by a thief. Since the crime was revealed during confession, Father Felix is bound by his vows. But that doesn't mean he can't return the stolen coin. Unfortunately, the valuable artifact is hidden in the infamous crypts in Palermo—under the body of a dead priest!
Along for the trip are intrepid teachers Amelia Johnston and Julia Hopwood, who happily put their detective gears in full grind. A troubled student, missing drugs, a murdered woman and a headmaster oddly interested in preserved corpses put the duo in the middle of a dangerous mystery. And it looks as if only one of them will be going home alive.
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